Janie Lynn Ridd and her roommate Rachel were best friends for 25 years.
The two women were inseparable and even moved in together after they met in 1995. They jointly cared for Rachel’s son, who is autistic and cannot communicate.
But after Rachel became dangerously ill several times without explanation and had to quit her job as a paramedic, she discovered that her best friend had tried to poison her with a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
“It’s really hard for me to believe that the person I’ve known for 25 years, my best friend and roommate, could do what she did,” said Rachel, who is identified only by her first name.
“But it was diabolical, it was evil. It was perfectly planned and planned.”
The story of the two women was documented in the first episode of the second season of “Worst Roommate Ever” on Netflix.
In the episode titled “My Best Friend Tried to Kill Me,” Rachel describes how she met Janie in 1995, when she was 22 and Janie was 26.
Rachel had just gotten through her divorce and moved back into her parents’ house when she started dating Janie. Janie, meanwhile, was living in an apartment that had been broken into and said she didn’t want to live alone.
The two women’s living circumstances seemed to fit together perfectly and so they decided to move in together.
Rachel said she initially felt “very safe” living with her friend and roommate. But when Rachel started making new friends and dating others, and Janie began exhibiting controlling and jealous behavior, things got worse.
Janie’s behavior escalated several years later, in 2010, Rachel said, when Rachel suffered a herniated disk and was unable to work. At the same time, she discovered she was pregnant, which further increased Janie’s influence over her.
“For the first time in our friendship, Janie had 100 percent control over me because I was unemployed, pregnant, had a back injury and was in so much pain that I needed her,” Rachel said in the docuseries.
Rachel gave birth to her son, Ryder, in 2010. Around the same time, Rachel decided to take out life insurance on herself and her roommate, with the women being each other’s beneficiaries.
Janie was also listed as Ryder’s legal guardian in Rachel’s will. Friends described Janie as a second mother who helped care for Ryder. When Rachel suffered another herniated disk in 2015 and doctors told her she would need surgery to prevent permanent disability, Janie took Ryder under her wing and enrolled herself and the child in a program that funded her care for Ryder, which became a “significant part” of Rachel’s income.
But Rachel told a different story. She said Janie’s alleged obsession with Ryder led her to abuse her role as caregiver to mother and son.
She claimed that Janie had made people at Ryder’s school believe she was his mother. This caused arguments between the two best friends, and on June 20, 2018, Rachel received a letter telling her that Janie was going to sue her for custody of Ryder. Rachel called the authorities, who told her that Janie had filed for a restraining order. Ryder was returned to Rachel’s care ten days later after a Child Protective Services investigation.
After the custody battle, the women moved back in together. But it wasn’t over.
While Rachel recovered from neck surgery, Janie helped with her care, including tending to her post-surgery cuts.
Rachel described Janie rubbing her neck, which ultimately caused even more pain.
According to a lawsuit obtained by Today.com, the wound was later found to contain a “suspected MRSA infection.” MRSA is a type of staph bacteria that can be resistant to multiple antibiotics, and Rachel ended up in the hospital.
Rachel then had two more mysterious health scares. The first occurred in June 2019, when Rachel said she had two separate episodes of dangerous blood sugar levels that required hospitalization, despite not being diabetic or taking insulin. Rachel recalled a conversation between her and Janie that took place while they were watching a true crime documentary, in which Janie told her the best way to kill someone and get away with it was to inject the victim with insulin.
Rachel underwent surgery again in October 2019 and “inexplicably developed three golf ball-sized infections at the wound.” One of the infections was investigated and found to contain the bacteria E. coli.
At the time, Rachel’s surgeon told investigators that the E. coli infection “was not related to the surgery and must have been caused by an injection.”
Meanwhile, the FBI was investigating someone who was trying to buy a deadly bacteria called vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) on the dark web. His trail led the investigation directly to Janie.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, VRSA is a strain of antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria that can cause everything from skin diseases to serious wound infections and can lead to death.
From October to December 2019, Janie communicated with the darknet provider and told him that she was a biology teacher and needed VRSA cultures for a school science experiment, the indictment states.
When the seller said VRSA was available for scientific research through more reputable sources, Janie offered to cover the cost of express shipping to receive the cultures faster, the indictment said, and paid for the $300 worth of bacteria in bitcoins.
According to the Netflix documentary, she also bought tranquilizers such as ketamine, Xanax and insulin pens on the dark web.
Janie was finally caught when investigators intercepted Janie’s virus order and replaced it with a fake package. They then placed surveillance on the UPS store where she had ordered the substance.
On the second day of their surveillance, they saw a person matching Janie’s description enter the store and pick up the package. After following her to Salt Lake, they arrested her at her workplace and questioned her about her plans with the bacteria.
Although she initially denied any malicious intent and instead claimed that the package contained coffee beans, she eventually admitted to having purchased a “biological preparation” on the dark web to make beer.
She then told investigators that she had ordered a form of staph for experimental purposes. During her FBI interview, Janie told agents that it never occurred to her to use the biological agent on Rachel.
“No, and I wouldn’t even know how to do that,” Janie said, according to a tape of the interview that aired during the show. “No, she’s my best friend and whether we fight or not, she’s been my best friend for 25 years and I love her like a sister.”
Authorities later found an empty insulin pen in Janie’s home with Rachel’s DNA on the outside of the pen, as well as a copy of her living will that had disappeared from the safe.
Janie was arrested and charged with three felonies: aggravated intentional abuse of a disabled or elderly person, attempted intentional abuse of a disabled or elderly person and attempted possession of a weapon of mass destruction, court records show.
Janie pleaded guilty on August 25, 2020 to attempted intentional abuse of a disabled or elderly person and attempted possession of a weapon of mass destruction. She was sentenced to between one and twenty years in prison.
Rachel now suspects that Janie started with Xanax before moving on to stronger substances like ketamine. She also believes she was injected with E.Coli, she said on the Netflix show.
“She took pleasure in torturing me,” Rachel said. “I don’t think I was human to her.”
Janie, now 55, was paroled and released in January 2022 after serving 25 months in prison, according to the documentation. She could not be reached for contact. The Independent.
In an undated recording of a phone call from the Salt Lake County Jail played during the show, Janie was heard saying, “I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to end up getting kicked out of here. I’m going to find a way to get him away from her. He’s got to come back to me now.”
